Love Hate
by Firebird9
Summary: Nicholas Angel has a complex relationship with firearms.


**Love/Hate**

**Author: **Firebird

**Rating:** T

**Disclaimer:** Neither Hot Fuzz nor its characters, settings etc. belong to me.

**Author's Note:** A quick note for any non-UK-based readers who were not aware of the fact: unlike their counterparts in the US and many other countries, British police do not routinely carry firearms, which is why guns are not drawn in the movie until the finale. This fic is unconnected to my other Hot Fuzz fic, When Duty Is Not Enough. It's a different style of writing for me (I'm usually very shippy), so feedback would be greatly appreciated.

**A/N 2: **Added a couple of lines from the movie. They might not be verbatim, but I didn't like that I left them out.

**

Nicholas Angel had always had a somewhat complex relationship with firearms. He appreciated that there was a certain irony in this, because firearms were far less complex than people. People lied, cheated, stole, murdered, used and abused and, when confronted with evidence of the above, lied some more. Nicholas had always found people to be somewhat difficult to understand, whereas firearms were very, very simple. Firearms were devices designed to propel small amounts of ammunition towards a target at great speed, thereby killing or incapacitating said target. They were inanimate objects and incapable of acting on their own initiative, for the simple reason that they possessed none. They only became problematic when they were wielded in an irresponsible manner by one of the aforementioned complex human beings.

Nicholas Angel was far from irresponsible. As a child, in his cartoon-influenced games of cops and robbers, he had repeatedly told his 'dying' friends that he had only shot to wound and they should be clutching their legs, not their stomachs. As an adult he had discovered that shooting to wound was nothing more than a pretty television fiction. In reality, if you needed to stop someone that badly, either because they were armed, or because they had a hostage, or both, you shot to kill. A torso presented a larger target than arms and legs, which were easily missed, and a wounded person could still shoot back – and was entirely likely to fire upon the person who had just shot them.

At first, Nicholas had felt uneasy about shooting at the paper and wooden representations of human beings with which he had been presented during his training, but after a while his perfectionist tendencies had taken over and he had worked hard to perfect his skill with a range of weapons. It was this high degree of proficiency which had ensured his selection to SO-19, and it was his selection to SO-19 which had ultimately led him to a personal crisis.

Nicholas Angel was something of a pacifist. Oh, he was perfectly willing to use reasonable force in the execution of his duties, but 'reasonable force' was defined as 'the minimum amount of force required to ensure public and personal safety.' He had not become a police officer because he was a violent man. He had become a police officer in order to protect the weak from those who were more than willing to use unreasonable force in the process of their cheating, stealing, murdering and so-forth. He was perfectly willing, when necessary, to use force to achieve this end, but he had never taken any pleasure in doing violence, and hoped he never would.

And then there had been the drug dealer with the Kalashnikov. He hadn't been much of a drug dealer really, just a kid, a bit-player who wanted to be a big man. Cannon fodder for the real Big Men to throw at Nicholas and the other officers of SO-19. And, as Constable Angel burst through the door into the grim flat to which Intelligence had led them, the kid had done his job and raised the weapon.

At that point, Nicholas Angel had discovered a particular horror that none of his previous experiences in the line of duty had exposed him to. The horror had not come so much from shooting the kid – although he had, of course, done that – but from what had gone through his head before, during, and immediately after the shooting, and in the days and weeks that followed.

What had gone through his head before he shot the kid was – nothing.

His subconscious had processed the threat, and he had raised his own weapon, aimed, and fired the first of two deadly shots all before his conscious mind had managed to formulate the thought 'gun'.

As he pulled the trigger a second time he had just enough time to think 'neutralise the threat'.

Then it was done, and he had turned away, scanning for other threats now that the initial one had indeed been neutralised. Seeing that the situation was under control he had moved cautiously towards the offender, weapon still held steady on his target. He removed the Kalashnikov, then looked down at the offender.

He knew he should have felt something, particularly as he realised just how young the offender was. He should have felt some trace of regret that he had snuffed out that young life, that any chance of reform was now gone, that someone's son would never come home again. Some revulsion at the sight of exactly what his bullets had done to the kid's head, part of which had been turned into so much gore splattered across the wall behind him. Even some guilt now that, justified or not, he was officially a killer.

Perhaps it was just residual adrenaline, but he felt nothing. No regret, no revulsion, no guilt, just... nothing. He had killed someone, and he couldn't seem to care. And that thought filled him with horror.

He had sought counselling. It was mandatory anyway, after a shooting, but he had continued to attend beyond the mandatory sessions. Janine had tried to talk to him, or get him to talk to her, but he hadn't been able to bring himself to voice to her the fear lurking in the deepest recesses of his mind. The fear that he had begun to descend a slippery slope, that numbness was merely an intermediate step between revulsion and pleasure. The fear that he was turning into a monster.

After a while his unwillingness to talk, even with all her encouragement, had begun to open a gulf between them. Perhaps it had already been there, a hairline fracture which had only widened as he pulled away and buried himself in work and silence, but ultimately it had consumed their relationship until he had decided to put them both out of their misery and had ended it.

In the face of opposition from his superiors and incomprehension from his colleagues he had also resigned from SO-19. In his mind it had been his only option. He did not consider killing in the line of duty to be morally wrong – pacifist leanings or not he was comfortable with the belief there were times when 'shoot to kill' _was_ 'reasonable force' – but he did consider it immoral to take pleasure in killing, and he was afraid, deathly afraid, that that might be where he was heading. After all, he had overcome his initial distaste for shooting at human-shaped targets and come to take real pleasure and pride in his ability to shoot with such skill and accuracy. Was it not, therefore, within the realm of possibility that he might also overcome his initial numbness at taking a human life and come to take a similar pleasure in killing actual people?

For two years, Nicholas Angel had managed to avoid holding a firearm, and most of him had been happy to keep it that way. But there had been a part of him, a small and horrifying part, which had regretted giving it up. His firearm certification had come closer and closer to expiry as he refused to handle a gun even on the range, and part of him had wanted to give in. Part of him had longed for the clarity, the simplicity, of a firearm, the single-minded focus of aiming, the quiet satisfaction of knowing that he had struck his target truly. If there had been any silver lining in the monotonous grey sky of his enforced relocation to Sandford it had been the hope that, with less violent crime and no handy firing range, he would have neither need nor opportunity to use a firearm again. He had also hoped, after Janine's relentless prodding, that he would not be called upon to discuss his experience with those who could not possibly understand it.

And then Nicholas Angel had met Danny Butterman, and any hope of avoiding discussion had disappeared. Danny had been even more persistent than Janine. At least Janine had had some sympathy for his feelings; Danny was only interested in hearing about guns and blood, and 'proper action and shit', and seemed oblivious to his partner's feelings on the subject.

It had all come to a head at the church fete. Danny had led him to a shooting gallery and urged him, with childlike enthusiasm, to have a go. Fear had whispered in his mind, telling him to turn away, turn away now, before it was too late. But there had been Danny looking at him with pleading and something close to worship in his eyes, and the 'good' doctor smiling at him as though confident that he was as inept as every other officer in Sandford, and the air rifle had been lying there, sleek and uncomplicated and seductive, and its siren song had hummed through his mind, and he had slid his hands over the rifle, almost caressing it, and it had felt so right, so very, very right...

One, two, three, four, five, six short, sharp shots, delivered from a calm place of absolute focus and clarity, and one, two, three, four, five, six little people had fallen. Danny had looked at him like he was some kind of hero, the doctor like he had grown an extra head, and his heart had been pounding so hard he had been amazed that they couldn't hear it. Like a choirboy who had just finished masturbating, he had been filled with a disorientating mixture of release, elation and guilt.

And then Danny had shot the doctor, and, unfortunate as the accident was, it had provided a welcome distraction.

"I never shot anybody before," his partner had commented, almost plaintively.

He was still too preoccupied with his own inner turmoil to offer anything which would have been helpful, or comforting, or even just plain snide. Instead he fell back on bitter honesty: "Believe me Danny, it's not something you ever get used to." No. Even if, God forbid, he shot a dozen people, it still wouldn't be something he would ever get used to.

Tim Messenger's murder later that day had been a further distraction, for Nicholas had long ago perfected the art of compartmentalising all personal concerns and setting them aside until he was off-duty, and that was precisely what he had done as he stood in the rain outside the church and tried once again to puzzle out just exactly what the hell was going on in Sandford. That puzzle had provided a very welcome and necessary distraction, something rational to think about rather than venturing into the worrying and irrational realm of his feelings, and he had pursued his private investigation with a near-religious fervour ('forgive me Father, for I have sinned...'). And that had led him to the late-night show-down with the NWA, and the boot of Danny's car, and then to a petrol station on a lonely stretch of road and the realisation that, for the sake of all those helpless people he had sworn to protect, something had to be done, and it was up to him to do it.

One thing he had been sure of: if he could possibly avoid it he would not kill again. It went against all his training, every procedural manual ever written and every lecture ever given, not to mention cold logic and primal, instinctive self-preservation, but if anyone could do it he was confident that he could. And so he had walked into the Sandford Police evidence room and allowed himself to look, really look, for the first time at the glorious bounty which they had seized from Elroy Farm. For a moment he had just gazed slowly around, before selecting a range of weapons which he was confident would serve his purpose.

He had nearly pulled it off. It had been incredible, the greatest rush of his life, and this time there was no need for guilt because he took no lives and harmed no innocents, and so he was free to revel in his own skill, his prowess with a gun, any gun, as one NWA member after another fell – wounded, but not dead.

Weaver had not been his fault, but if he had needed any reminder of what guns were, what they could do in the wrong hands, what Weaver had done to Danny had been it.

He had surrendered his guns without protest, because it was wrong to take pleasure in violence.

He had surrendered them without protest, but not without regret.


End file.
